Are We There Yet?: Beautiful morning, No Cell Service, Cape Flattery, Forks, Lessons Learned, 4th of July

7/4/2016

Happy 4th of July!! We slept pretty well on the deck of my friend's house. I woke up early to take care of some bathroom business, and then I couldn't get back to sleep. So, I took a short video of the backyard of our friends house. It was a beautiful, peaceful setting. So nice to experience that. Something was growling/grunting in the woods somewhere. I'm not sure what it was, but it never made an appearance.

We got the tent put away and all our sleeping bags, etc, had a nice breakfast and then headed on our way.

I was a little surprised at how small Neah Bay was. I guess I was expecting a little more of a town than that. The other bad thing was there was a detour around the main street of town due to the Fourth of July parade and there was absolutely no cell service, so I couldn't get GPS on my phone and the car's GPS system didn't have the way mapped to Cape Flattery at the NW tip there, so I had to rely on the signs for getting there. We made it ok, but I've discovered I don't like not having service on my phone!!

Cape Flattery

Luckily, there was parking when we got there. We started down the trail and as we walked, I noticed we were heading down a lot. That only means we have to walk up on the way back which is never a happy thing. It was a beautiful walk though. Daniel and Jorren blazed way ahead (everything Jorren does is a race to get there first) so I walked with McKay. About 3/4 there, we saw Jorren coming back onto the trail from the side, so somewhere along the way, he and Daniel went off on a side trail (not supposed to do that), but at least they made it back to the main trail.

There were several look-outs near the end of the trail, so we stopped and took pictures at all of them. At the very end, the lookout was up a couple of very steep stairs. When I got up there, I saw Daniel was there with the puppy. I wondered aloud how he got him up those steep stairs and he told me he had to push him up there. So, we do have pictures of all of us up there at the end.

The walk back wasn't too bad, just the last part was a little steep, but I made it. The parking lot was full when we got there and people were waiting for parking. I told someone that they could have our spot but I had to go to the bathroom first, if he wanted to wait. Man! I've been in some smelly biffies before, but this was really bad! I couldn't pee fast enough to get out of there! Sheesh!

We left there and had to head back into Neah Bay and past it to Seiku to start heading south on the 101. That's where we started our journey down the coast on Hwy 101 at the junction of 113 and 101 at Sappho, WA.

Start of our journey on the 101 South

We jogged down to First Beach before heading through Forks to enjoy the beach for a bit. Jorren decided to not wear his fisherman sandals down to the rocky beach and instead wore his flipflops. Since it was so rocky, he wore them into the surf and of course, they came off. He was only able to recover one and the other one started heading out to sea. By the time I realized what had happened, it was out there a ways. I asked him why he wasn't trying to get it and he told me it was too far out. I wouldn't accept that, and I made it try to go out and get it. He's a strong swimmer and I didn't see any signs of rip tides, it was just cold and uncomfortable.

He finally made some decent attempts until someone came over to us and told us that she would rather give me the money to replace them than to watch him try to get the sandal because it was so far out (it wasn't really that far!). I just told Jorren that was it and it was time to go and walked away. I guess the lady took pity on us and she went and got the sandal (I told you it wasn't that far really) and brought it up to us as we were drying off and changing clothes in the car. Then, we had a little impromptu lesson about trying something, even if it hard, and failing, rather than trying at all and waiting for someone else to do it for us. I told him I would much rather see him try and fail at something than not try at all.

Anyway, back to our trip. We stopped in Forks at a Twilight shop just because there was a penny smasher inside. We didn't buy anything though.

We drove down 101 to our KOA at Bay Center/Willapa Bay and pitched our tent for the night. It was still early though so we hung around the camp a bit. We went down the path to the bay. Now this was a bunch of steps straight down to the beach. The kids were pretty disappointed since there wasn't much of a beach. The tide was out, if you can call it that. I don't know how full that bay usually gets, but Daniel walked out on the beach trying to get to the water and he was out there about a 1/2 mile or so. I took some great pictures of the sunset. But, it was cold out there, and we didn't bring our jackets and blankets. The staff at the KOA said they usually sat down there at night to see if someone around the area let off fireworks, but I didn't really feel like walking back up the stairs and then back down again with our jackets and blankets and the kids didn't either, so we headed back to camp and I got out the lighted helicopter toys that I bought and we spent the rest of the night near the campfire, shooting those up in the sky and catching them, seeing a few big firework bombs through the trees around us. We went to bed late, since it doesn't get dark until 10 pm there.